As the troops waited for President Obama to come into the hangar at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, an Army band serenaded the crowd.
Not with Sousa or the theme from “Patton.” The band — drawn from the 101st Airborne Division and called Nuts after General McAuliffe’s rebuttal to a German surrender ultimatum — jammed to a more resonant tune.
The young female soldier who is the lead singer belted out “I Kissed A Girl” — Katy Perry’s ode to Sapphic smooching.
The lyrics about “the taste of her cherry Chapstick” and “just human nature” offered a cheeky counterpoint to the weighty debate going on half-a-world away as the Senate Armed Services Committee hashed over questions of human nature and sexual tension.
Heh. I gare-on-tee ya that some enlisted (wo)man came up with that addition to the play list! Officers ain't got the balls.
Even after a Pentagon report showing that most troops and their families think that allowing gays and lesbians to be themselves would not be a big deal, even after the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff urged the Senate to repeal the law that demands dishonesty, Democrats were still fending off a snarling John McCain and a few unreconstructed Southerners.
In yet another ludicrous bit of goal-post shifting, McCain said it wasn’t enough that the top two leaders of the military, and many of the troops, favored repeal. Now he wants to hold 13 hearings and solicit the views of senior enlisted personnel around the world, even though, as the Army chief, Gen. George Casey Jr., dryly informed the panel, the military is not a democracy. The five service chiefs agreed that, if asked, they could successfully carry out the changes.
It’s unclear why McCain is being so stubborn and stalling, particularly when those closest to him — his wife, his daughter and his cloakroom buddy Joe Lieberman — have all boldly spoken out on behalf of gays in the military.
It's clear as a bell to me - McCain is pandering to what he thinks is his 'base', the same throwback minority that couldn't elect him President, thank you Jesus. They resist change from the 'good old days' of happy straight white intolerance. If homos was bad then, they're still bad now because we're real Amurrikans and never wrong cuz blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus said it even if he didn't but would've if he'da thunk of the next election in which we gotta get everything back from The Others, like libruls and the darker-hued and reality. And the next one after that. And the next one after that.
Shit, even LIE-berman appears to have seen the handwriting on the wall on this one. The writing on the wall of the men's room is all McCain sees.
The problem is that each individual Senator has the power to gum up the works for the whole country with his own brand of cheap shit. This needs to change.
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