Short Shrift

Southern Beale, writing at First Draft, on that angry white men thing:

No, I still say the Angry White Men who comprise the bulk of the Republican Party are basically angry at their cultural irrelevance. They're angry their racist, homophobic, misogynist jokes aren't funny anymore. They're angry that the '60s happened, and then the '70s, and then the '90s happened, when Communism died and they no longer knew who to be angry at. They're angry they're unable to influence the culture at large, that no one even bothers to launch boycotts of their outspoken, angry musicians because when was the last time Hank Williams Jr. was relevant, anyway? The modern Republican Party has become so regional and parochial, Ohio's Republican candidate for U.S. Senate recently faked a Southern drawl at a Romney campaign event.

This is how they ended up with Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair which, as one Nashville blogger observed, was actually a step up from the bulk of the modern Republican Party. Hell, at least Eastwood was trying to have a conversation with President Obama.

They just need to dance more. [/dismissive]

ETA because all the good stuff turns up after I hit Publish:  Melissa McEwan on Values, featuring the "values" ad the Republicans are running.

Despite their reflexive and compulsive intoning of the word "values" during every election year, as if it's a magical incantation that can be uttered only by those who understand its complex truth, it doesn't really mean anything, in and of itself. It's an ethically neutral word. Everyone has values. What matters is not that you have values, but what values you have. Joseph Stalin valued killing people. Jeffrey Dahmer valued eating people. George Bush valued torturing people. I value not killing people, not eating them, and not torturing them. See? Everyone has values.

See, I value letting people make their own choice about what kind of relationships they want (some people don't actually want marriage, after all, and some people would like close ties with more than one other person.  Yes, that's shocking.  Deal), or as the limerick put it, "for what and with which and to whom."  I get the impression that given the power, some conservatives would cheerfully institute arranged marriages.  For them, it seems to be all about mating and breeding, and most people are not cattle.  Right?  Furthermore, insisting that the only good marriage is heterosexual means that the occasional LBGTQ person caught in that trap (family, social pressure, Republican busybodying) is going to end up miserable for however many years until getting the divorce.

Nobody is forcing anyone into a same-sex marriage (hey!  Maybe that's their problem!  No one is being forced to do it, so it must be Wrong!); I see no shotguns.