For all the people who are against gay marriage and hoping that it will all go away, I feel that I must inform you the battle is now officially over, and your side lost.
I say this not to place any value judgement, but rather just to make an observation, From this moment on, you are officially on "The Wrong Side of History." It's not that there is now an entire country for which gay marriage is legal. After all, that's just one country, and there are so many other countries in the world, so maybe your hopes are still high that you'll be able to keep the "sanctity of marriage" going. Again, though, you must disabuse yourself of that thought. It's over. As I said, it's not that gay marriage is now legal in one country, Ireland. That's just stating the obvious at its most basic. It's that there is so much more piled on top of that which has now firmly, emphatically and explicitly decided the issue. For instance, gay marriage wasn't made legal by a court decision that might leave the door open for the public to rise up against "judicial activists". It passed by referendum vote of The People. Further, it passed resoundingly, with a huge majority of 62% of the vote. A vote of 62-38% is so far outside the margin of error, that you'd need the Hubble Telescope to simply find the border. So, there's no "squeaking through" that leaves the possibility of Irish voters having second thoughts and overturning their decision the next time around.. But there's much more than just that. Importantly, to understand the full meaning of this landslide vote, you must understand the context of it in Ireland. As recently as 1993, just a mere 22 years ago (to put a date on this, that's yesterday when Bill Clinton was president), it was actually illegal in Ireland to commit homosexual acts And now, only two decades later, Ireland has decided that those same homosexuals can marry. That's not a tottering, balancing act of uncertainty that a brisk wind can push in another direction, it's a volcanic change of attitude. And looking at the context even deeper, as recently as 1995, only a paltry 20 years ago, the Irish people took the sanctity of marriage so profoundly seriously...that divorce was illegal. That's about as deep a view of sanctity of marriage as you can have. Thou shalt not divorce. Ever. So, anyone who tries now to make the argument that the reason you can't have gays wed is because it's against the sanctity of marriage -- well, you just have had the most adamant, strict defenders of the sanctity of marriage, who as recently as 1995 didn't even allow divorce, tell everyone that, as far as sanctity goes, gay marriage is just fine to them. And finally, on top of all these prominent reasons piling on top of one another for why the issue of gay marriage is over and decided definitively in favor is because its opponents can now no longer use the empty argument that it goes against their Catholic religious beliefs. Because -- again, by way of reminder -- this 62% landslide majority vote occurred in Ireland. And Ireland is 84% Catholic. It might be the most-Catholic country on earth. Indeed, the only place on the globe that's more Catholic than Ireland is probably the Vatican. So, if 84%-Catholic Ireland has now said that they have no religious problem with gay people marrying, it is now pretty much impossible for anyone to point to religion as the barrier. So, anyone who thinks that this is just a mere matter of one country making gay marriage legal, you are looking down and seeing a one-story building, when in fact if you opened your eyes wider and tilted your head up you'd find that what you're actually looking at is the first floor of a 100-floor skyscraper. This is like being in New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina moved in, and saying after the first levee was breached, "That's okay, it's only one levee," moments before the whole city was flooded underwater. It's over. History has spoken. And opponents of gay marriage are now officially on the wrong side of it.
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How can you tell that it's a slow news day? Well, sometimes by looking at the calendar and seeing that it's a national holiday. They're notorious for not much happening, and Memorial Day fits the bill perfectly. However, sometimes an important -- or even just a semi-important -- story can creep its way in through the cracks. But if you're the editor of, say, the Huffington Post, the way you know that nothing (and I mean, absolutely freaking nothing) happened is when you have no choice at all but to make your banner headline story on the Politics front page -- Seriously. This was the Politics front page of the Huffington Post today.
Now, even on most moderate news days Rush Limbaugh criticizing President Obama would not make a banner headline. It wouldn't even likely make a news story, period. It's his job description, after all. For goodness sake, the fellow is a self-proclaimed "entertainer." He pretty much literally gets paid to lambaste Barack Obama. If you printed as news whenever Rush Limbaugh slammed President Obama, your news site would look almost identical to RushLimbaugh.com. So, for Rush Limbaugh attacking President Obama to not only make it as a "news story", but the banner headline can only happen if -- a) it's a holiday and the main editor is off, and an intern is in charge, b) you're a political "news" website so far to the right that the Drudge Report looks moderate, c) you're on an imminent deadline, accidentally hit the <Enter> key when you meant to hit <Delete> and never bothered to check your own site to correct the mistake, or d) absolutely nothing else happened that day. Seriously, folks, the only way in the world that a story about Rush Limbaugh and Barack Obama could be actual news is if one day the bombastic entertainer actually said something positive about the president. Anything positive. "Rush Limbaugh Likes Obama's Shoes." That would be a banner headline. That's how slow a news day it was. This week's contestant is Barry Free from Blackfoot, ID. I was able to get the hidden tune within about seven notes, so I think most people have a good chance of guessing it, too. However, what's odd is that Mr. Free struggled with it. The composer style was a toss-up to me between a few people, and so I took a shot at one that seemed the most likely. And joy o' joys, I was right. So, this is one of the uncommon times when I got both ends.
Every year on PBS they broadcast the National Memorial Day Concert from Washington, D.C. I always like the Armed Forces Medley, so I figured today was appropriate to post it here. This is from the 2010 broadcast, introduced by co-host Gary Sinise. The sound quality isn't crisp, but the lyrics to all the songs are included which is why I decided to use this particular clip. (I think most people generally know the words, but over time, some of them do slip through the cracks. Besides, I never knew the words to the Coast Guard Anthem. Whenever I'd visit my folks at their independent living residence, one of their best friends was a wonderful guy named Sidney Kraus (who I wrote about here). Sid was a former professor and well-regarded historian about the presidential debates (the author of several books on them and other subjects), extremely funny, wildly liberal and loved discussing politics or...well, most anything. But as funny and jovial as he was, he was deeply proud of his military service, and would turn deeply serious at a moment's notice when the subject came up. He always wore his Navy baseball cap on Memorial Day, and other appropriate days when the mood hit him. He was even planning to get to the big D-Day Memorial Celebration held last December on its 50th anniversary in Normandy, and though it was difficult for him to get around, he had gotten approval to participate by an armed forces group which was arranging travel for a limited number of veterans. Alas, he passed away in November, just a month before the event. (Though at that point, his condition had worsened enough that it was unlikely he could have made the trip.) So, in part in his memory, I wanted to include this video, as well. I figured we might as well make it a Dick Van Dyke weekend. A few years ago, Dick Van Dyke and his brother Jerry appeared in a limited-run production of Neil Simon's play, The Sunshine Boys. I believe they only did it in two cities, and one of those was very close by, in Malibu. To my great annoyance I found out after-the-fact, so I never saw it. And this is one of those it's just teeth-aching to have missed. I believe that they had an offer to take it to Broadway, but as Dick said later the idea of them playing eight shows a week was just too much. (I believe he was 84 at the time. Jerry was 79. In fact, he also noted that he and Jerry were actually too old for the roles as written, since they're supposed to be in their early 70s. But then George Burns was too old for the part, as well, and that didn't hurt things...) Well, though I didn't get a chance to see it on stage, here's a treat: an hour of that production. The sound isn't great, but it's definitely listenable. If you want to jump to Dick's entrance, it comes at the 10:30 mark. It was a quiet week back in May, 2014. From the archives, the town re-examines its philosophy on lawn care, the Lutheran Church holds its church picnic, and the war between Pastor Haugen and his secretary Marlene intensifies
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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