The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.
Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.
If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race....
It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind with they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box. Mrs. Clinton once had a big lead among the party elders, but has been steadily losing it, in large part because of her negative campaign. If she is ever to have a hope of persuading these most loyal of Democrats to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs.
Putting aside the incredibly homophobic photo accompanying this article in the New York Times (more on that later), this news will likely not sit well with America's Taliban. More from the NYT (via Signorile), quoting a British Defense Ministry official:
“There are some sensitivities over the timing of this. We have had communications from our counterparts in the United States, and they have asked us questions about how we’ve handled it and how it’s gone on the ground. There does seem to be some debate going on over how long the current policy will be sustainable.”
Now back to the Times' ill-advised choice of a photo of some drag queens to illustrate how "normal" British gay soldiers are.
This was something the American press did like clockwork in the 1990s and before. If they covered a gay event or gay issue, they simply had to accompany the article with a flamboyant photo of a drag queen. I love a good drag queen, and the photo in the Times is adorable. But I like that photo because I'm gay (and/or gay-friendly). I wonder how many straight people who find themselves in the middle on gay issues, or even those slightly (or majorly) predisposed against us (especially on the gay-ban), will have their subtle prejudices reinforced by a photo that pretty much makes gay people look like effete fools. Because, you know, nudge nudge wink wink, the women are butch and everything, so maybe they're okay in the military, but the guys are all men who just yearn to put up on women's make-up and wigs - hardly the manly men you'd want fighting the terrorists, let alone sleeping in the cot next to you. That's the stereotype, and that's why there was such an outcry against the previous media bias about publishing such photos every time a gay issue arose. The media got over their bias a long time ago. And now, it seems, we've had a relapse.
