The Rude Pundit - Quickies: Gay Marriage, Susan Komen Debacle, and Dirty Harry

Man, it's just Tuesday, and it's already been a shit week for conservatives:

1. Proposition 8, the Mormon-licious California law that banned gay marriage, was declared unconstitutional by a 3-judge panel (or a "justice-a'-trois&quot from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Right now, that sound you're hearing is several million evangelical heads exploding and the clicks of computer keyboards as assloads of money pour into homophobic candidates and organizations and the dropping of pants, licking of lips, and moans, moans, moans of joy all over California. The Rude Pundit will have more on this tomorrow, but what's amazingly wonderful is that the decision itself is such an utter pimp-slapping that a sane hooker wouldn't even think of crossing Judge Reinhardt again.

2. Karen Handel, the anti-choice Republican who was senior vice president for public policy of Susan G. Komen for the Cure and was, for all intents and purposes, the driving force behind the debacle of Komen dropping its funding of breast exams and education programs at Planned Parenthood, which was later reversed when everyone realized that it was a fucking crazy decision, resigned today. In her resignation letter, Handel said, more or less, "No way, no how was this about politics, uh-uh. And because it wasn't about politics, it would have been so sweet not to fund Planned Parenthood. But that wasn't a political decision," thus creating one more in the series of excuses from Komen. Seriously, it would have been easier just to say, "Yeah, fine, we did it because we're big damn conservatives and we hate Planned Parenthood because conservatives are fucking crazy now."

3. Speaking of conservatives being fucking crazy, the outrage on the right over the Clint Eastwood-narrated Chrysler ad is beyond bizarre. Yes, there was an image from the protests at the Wisconsin capital, but that was timed with the word "discord," not "freedom" or "heroic." Otherwise, the script is a locker room pep talk, one that is inclusive as can be. One part in particular seems to grate on the right: Detroit "almost lost everything. But we all pulled together, now Motor City is fighting again." At some point, someone needs to say to Republicans that it's okay to have been wrong about the auto bailout. Now let's move on.

But they can't. They just can't. Karl Rove pranced onto Fox "news" to announce his displeasure, saying that the ad was "a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising." The man who helped demonize a legless Vietnam vet said he was "offended."

What this reaction says is something deeper. See, Clint Eastwood, who voted for John McCain and opposed the bank and car bailouts, thinks the whole controversy is bullshit. He rewrote the script, and he's donating his pay to charity. What Rove and the rest of the right's negative reaction really means is that they are divorced from the nation as a whole. In the ad, Eastwood says that, during tough times, "we all rallied around what was right, and acted as one." We acted, in essence, like Americans.

Conservatives are saying that it's offensive to expect them to do so. And if Dirty Harry wants to wallow around with the dirty hippies, then fuck him, too.

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