Defending the bisexuality in his "Alexander":

“Alexander lived in a more honest time,” the controversial filmmaker, who directed the big-budget flick starring Colin Farrell, tells the upcoming issue of Playboy magazine. “We go into his bisexuality. It may offend some people, but sexuality in those days was a different thing. Pre-Christian morality. Young boys were with boys when they wanted to be.”

First of all, I don't know how much the man's bisexuality needs defending. He was gay. The film has to note that, I suppose. Especially these days, when to elide over it would cause a furor.

But look-- what's Stone trying to tell us, here?

I know from a gay friend that there is an idea among gays that everyone is pretty much gay, but only some are "brave" enough to act on their gay desires. People universalize from their own situations, I guess; just as gays can't imagine that some people aren't gay, some straights have an awful lot of difficulty imagining life as someone physically attracted to the same sex.

But if the right is to be faulted for not being understanding enough about gays' hard-wired, almost-impossible-to-thwart sexual drives, can the left lay off with this crap about how we'd all exist in some sort of Pansexual Pandemonium if it weren't for "Christianity" and our "society" telling boys not to have sex with boys?

Any time anyone says something like this, he gets hit immediately with the kneejerk charge of "overcompensating" or "hiding something" or "secretly gay," but who cares: If you're attracted to boys, that's fine and all, but trust me, there are an awful lot of other men who have never once even thought about having sex with a guy.* It's not a deep secret urge being restrained by some Christian superego; it's just not on the fuckin' menu, okay, Oliver?**

I think it's very nice that some on the left are/have been attracted to the same sex, and maybe have been a little more than attracted. I'm not going to "deny your sexuality" or whatnot.

But do me a favor and don't deny mine. Not everyone's gay, you know. I know you sort of want to believe that, but it's just not true.

* I can only offer the straight male take on this. I'd extend my analysis to women, but I'm restrained by the wisdom of a remark by Dennis Finch on Just Shoot Me: "Every woman's just a few drinks away from some hot girl-on-girl action."

Is this true? Well, one can only hope. Let's just say it doesn't seem entirely untrue. But maybe I just went to a really fun college.

** Okay, perfect candor requires me to admit that my record of virulent heterosexuality is almost umblemished, but only almost.

Look, yes, I do dress up as Nick Rhodes every Saturday night, but that's only because I play air-synthesizer in my lip-sync Duran Duran cover group, Wild Boys. I swear to you, I do not enjoy wearing eyeliner and lipstick and fingerless gloves.

Okay, I don't exactly hate it, either. But I assure you it's all for the sake of art.

And okay, fine, I did shack up for a time with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. But power is an aphrodisiac, and besides, when I was young and sexually confused, I was young and sexually confused.

Plus, I got a kick-ass recommendation out of it. A nice recommendation from Dr. Henry Kissinger (or "Doctor Kissyface," as I know him) makes up for an awful lot of shame and emotional scars.

You curl up into the fetal position in the shower a couple of times like Glenn Close in The Big Chill and seriously, the water just washes the tears away.

Posted by: Ace at 09:19 AM | Comments (17)
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MichaelM "questions the timing":

A mass grave containing the bodies of children, babies and their mothers has been unearthed in Iraq.

Shocked investigators reported finding "thighbones the size of matchsticks" at what they believe is the site of one of Saddam Hussein's atrocities. Among the findings-were the skeletons of unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys.

A baby had been shot in the back of its head and was found still being clutched by its mother, who had been shot in the face. The discovery was reported as Tony Blair came under mounting pressure to apologise to Parliament for the misleading intelligence claiming Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

...

One trench contains only women and children while another contains only men. "The youngest foetus we have was 18 to 20 foetal weeks," said a US investigating anthropologist. "Tiny bones, femurs - thighbones the size of a matchstick."

John Kerry immediately issued a patronizing statement that while he "respects" the opinion of those against mass-murder of post-natal fetuses, he cannot inject his religion into the debate and must afford Saddam Hussein his constitutional right to murder children.

Posted by: Ace at 09:04 AM | Comments (26)
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So says Liberal Larry, ironically, I'm pretty sure.

Indeed, now that Reeve has bought the farm, John Kerry often reflects deeply and openly upon the friendship they shared. After he saved the actor's life in Vietnam, the two became Indian Blood Brothers and vowed that should General Zod ever escape from the Phantom Zone, they would reunite to defeat him.

They also vowed that one day George Bush the Elder would bow down before them, and then, one day, his heir.

Thanks to Florida Cracker.

Posted by: Ace at 09:00 AM | Comments (1)
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It's just too effin' funny.

All of this crying over Stolen Honor, and yet no one said boo when Michael Moore announced he was planning an election-eve pay-per-view celebritython offering of Fahrenheit 9-11.

Update: Qu'ran makes similar points.

More interesting to me, he catches Filet-O-Fish calling Instapundit a partisan hack, in so many words.

I don't get it. Instapundit made this guy. Willis owes his entire undeserved modicum of semi-fame to Instapundit, who was entirely over-generous in constantly linking this jackass.

But everytime Willis insults him, he gives him a link.

This is odd behavior. Principled, I guess, but why encourage insults from a retard?

For what it's worth, Instapundit annoys me when he suggests -- as he occasionally does -- that, to fight the war, we have to enact his preferred libertarian social policy immediately, lest the terrorists win. I'm not a fan of linking anything to the War on Terror except, you know, the War on Terror.

Hoping for a link. Fingers crossed!

Posted by: Ace at 08:50 AM | Comments (10)
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UPDATE! Answers to the following quiz have been posted at this link.

Since I started this blog, I've dropped a lot of pop-culture references as they relate to politics, but pretty much I've avoided really getting into pop culture at all. I'm a pop culture freak -- well, at least I'm a freak for bad male-oriented 80's-90's pop culture -- but I figured a blog needed a focus, and this blog's focus was pretty much politics.

But every time I post something having to do with pop culture, I get busloads of comments. I had no idea so many readers were starving to discuss Eddie and the Cruisers, Streets of Fire (greatest. film. ever.) or the career of William Peterson.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:34 AM | Comments (69)
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First Kaus calls Sullivan "excitable," and now Instapundit's finally had it with Filet-O-Fish and is calling him "overwrought." The word "sissy" is also used, if only to disclaim the intent to call Willis a sissy, but it just doesn't seem that convincing to me.

See? I always have been respectable. I was just ahead-of-the-curve as far as calling twits, douchebags, and jackasses by their proper names. It took some while for the bourgeois masses to appreciate my genius for calling people "cocksucker."

Thanks to both MichaelM and Terry Notus.

Posted by: Ace at 12:23 AM | Comments (5)
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"Racism" is only racist if it can be pinned on a conservative.

Now, let me say something. I actually think there is far too much PC in this world. I don't think that making some lighthearted jab about race or sexuality is necessarily hateful -- context and spirit are important -- but this is pretty offensive.

And it's also offensive that all this talk of "sensitivity" is so transparently used for a purely political purpose. If liberals really cared about sensitivity, they wouldn't indulge themselves in gratuitiously offensive jokes like this. They care primarily about strong-form "sensitivity" -- Thou Shalt NEVER Say Anything Even Close to Being Hurtful or Offensive -- as a weapon to use against conservatives.

Via Michelle Malkin.

Update: A cartoon in the spirit of Danziger, with Al Sharpton as a pimp.

Look, you traffic in this sort of crap, and they you can't whine about "sensitivity," Jeffy.

Posted by: Ace at 12:01 PM | Comments (17)
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Why would he say that Sox fans aren't living in reality, just as they're about to take on the Yanks in the ALCS?

There's a word for that. It's defeatism.

He was trying to be funny, I guess, but his attempts to be funny are much like Lieutenant Fucking Data's. We need Geordi to explain this douchebag that knock-knock jokes aren't funny for anyone over five years old.

Son of Nixon is pissed off (as usual!), only this time he's got a picture of Shannen Doherty showing a lot of cleavage, for no reason whatsoever. I estimate she's showing cleavage that rates about .32, at least three times the legal limit (four times in some states).

I'd never stoop to putting up such a picture on this very responsible site, but I sure the hell will link to it.

Posted by: Ace at 10:53 AM | Comments (2)
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And by jump ugly, I mean jump liberal. Full-out liberal. Not this passive-aggressive blatant-yet-plausibly-deniable soft left-liberalism that infects all the networks.

Some time ago I speculated that Dan Rather's incredibly irresponsible use of "unimpeachable source" and all-around-crank Bill Burkett might signal that he had made a decision-- maybe he wasn't conscious of it, but inside, somewhere, he had made it. The decision was that in an age of declining major-media audience and a proliferation of alternative media, perhaps the same staid model of network news -- soft yet blatant left-liberal tilting -- wasn't the future.

Perhaps FoxNews was the future. Perhaps FoxNews' brand of opinionated, punchy, partisan reportage was the right model for the future. (Note that when I say "partisan," I maintain that FoxNews is less biased to the right than any of the nets are biased to the left. But they are, of course, Republican leaning; let's not jerk ourselves around about that. They seem especially so when compared to the very liberal "objective news reportage" we've come to expect from our overpaid newsdopes, but yes, they do tilt right.)

Jim Pinkerton had a similar take on the Halperin memo on Fox News Watch. (That link, by the way, is to Poedhertz's take on the memo; I'm just linking that so everyone knows what I'm talking about.)

Perhaps Halperin too had decided to take the dishonest "objective" gloves off, and try to remake ABCNews into a more transparently left-leaning news organization.

The interesting thing is this: If this is, in fact, where network news is headed, only one network can, from a purely business standpoint, chase after the left-wing audience. For years, the nets have all been chasing the same declining audience with their liberal coverage; as others have pointed out, from a purely business standpoint, it never made sense for all three to do so. It made more sense for at least one network to attempt a more conservative take, again, just from the standpoint of market-share and revenue.

It is a sign of how damn left-leaning reporters and editors and producers are that all of them have refused steadfastly to even flirt with such take. They're choosing to have less audience and less revenue than is possible, because the cost of doing so -- actually giving conservative leaning stories a fair hearing -- is such anathema to them on a personal level.

So, CBSNews, ahem, "fell" for transparent forgeries and became at least an unwitting accomplice in a fraud on the American public, six weeks from an election. Clearly CBSNews has made its first move.

And now ABC's Mark Halperin has made his move.

Why? Because if this is where it's all headed, no one wants to be the last network to try this. Because the last network to try to jump liberal will find that market oversaturated, and might be forced to -- horror of horrors! -- attempt to capture the conservative audience by tilting a little to the right (or just to the middle).

NBCNews is generally the most widely-watched newscast. So, at this point, I don't think they'd even have to contemplate such a move. They're winning with their ostensibly-centrist-but-undeniably-liberal coverage. They can maintain that posture. Too bad, because the NBC entertainment network has, I think, the most liberal leaning audience, and they've been the most aggressive in airing shows that appeal to urban liberals. The fit between NBC entertainment and liberal newscasting would be almost perfect, but, alas, Tom Brokaw is doing too well right now to make such a commitment.

So the fight is between CBSNews and ABCNews. Both desperately would like to be more liberal than they've allowed themselves to be so far; neither wants to be stuck with that troglodytic, hateful, gay-hatin' racist audience known as "40% of America."

CBSNews is actually behind in this race, by the way, oddly enough. By being so irresponsible and partisan, they've actually increased the chances that, once Dan Rather is canned, the network will try for a more fair and balanced anchor. (Does Brit Hume have a provision in his FoxNews contract allowing him to bail if offered a network show, by the way?) Plus, CBS entertainment's audience is famously older and more conservative; they're the ones offering the closest thing to conservative-themed entertainment. CBS executives are always getting whip-sawed by their more conservative audience when they attempt to air liberal hatchet jobs like The Reagans.

Leaving a big opening for Mark Halperin. Nice work, Mark. I don't mind that you're inclining in this direction; I just wish you would be more honest about where you stand at the moment. Once you transform ABCNews into America's Liberal News Leader, I'll have no real complaint about how you coverage the news, at least from the standpoint of honest disclosure of partisan bias.

Another Take: Not really the point I'm making, but here's another column on the Halperin memo.

Posted by: Ace at 10:29 AM | Comments (7)
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Doesn't seem to make sense, does it? Jonah Goldberg doesn't think so, and Alarming News quotes him making that point.

Posted by: Ace at 09:45 AM | Comments (2)
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