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 —Where's Gay Leadership Outrage? David Williams Asks: Why is the U.S. Media Going Along? Only Florida's Bob Kunst has Protested the Bush Inaugural! |
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Compiled By GayToday
"Yesterday was Coronation Day for King George. I spent the day hibernating. As disgusted as I was with Dubya's choosing to nominate Ashcroft in the first place, and showing his call for unity to be a blatant lie, I am equally disgusted with the impotence of the GLBT movement." Although both the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force had issued earlier alerts about the Bush administration's choice of former Senator Ashcroft as U.S. Attorney General, Miller is now wondering why the organizations were silent while Ashcroft misled Senators about gay matters during his confirmation hearings last week. Miller continues: "I can't for the life of me figure out why our GLBT advocacy groups did not seize on the contradictory testimony of Ashcroft in the 2nd day of his confirmation hearings. Senator Feinstein made it perfectly clear that Ashcroft had rejected Hormel's nomination with the following: "You voted against him (Hormel) at the time, saying, 'because he engaged in a gay lifestyle.' " "Ashcroft did not refute having said that, but it did not match the answer he gave earlier in the day, when he said Hormel's sexuality had nothing to do with his opposition to his Ambassadorship.
Editor David Williams, refelcting in an advance February editorial for The Letter, Kentucky's GLBT newspaper, wondered why mainstream media has remained so tame in its treatment of the Bush takeover. Williams says: "Not since Gerald Ford–our only other unelected president--has a man of such light weight floated into the White House. It would be a mistake, however, to underestimate him. Like many a man of small intellect, he's surrounded himself with people smarter than him: admittedly not a hard thing to do. They make him look good. The sad part is, the press–which should be able to see through that screen--is going along, at least for now. Where are our Woodwards and Bernsteins? "Bush's supporters, the people beyond the oval door and the moneyed backers who implausibly convinced him he's presidential material, are worrisome enough. We all know who they are: the ones who would unravel decades of environmental protections, smudge the wall between church and state, and loosen federal policies on civil rights and reproductive freedom. "More troubling in this new equation is the media, which has so far pretty much ignored our worries. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. discovered, progress in America is impossible without the advantage of the media's pressure. In the coming months, will the same media that once made the plight of African-Americans so visible be around for our Birminghams? Will we be able to get the attention of people whose offices are encased with windows that no longer open? If we shout, will the decibels register in their board rooms? "During the Clinton years, the media came through for us, though often reluctantly. Stories on Ellen's coming out may have devolved into a circus, but coverage of the murder of Matthew Shepard was dutifully respectful. Editorial rooms pondered our issues intelligently."
On Thursday evening, the Oral Majority protesters appeared in Atlanta, where they were twice featured on that city's NBC news affiliate. Friday afternoon, local media met the Oral Majority as its protesters demonstrated at Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Their final destination, Washington, D.C., found the Floridians positioned at the starting place for the Inaugural parade, part of a larger contingent of protesters, but unique in that the 48 Oral Majority riders each wore a mock crown for the "coronation." Simultaneously, a second disenfranchised voters' protest in Tallahassee by members of the African-American community was featured on C-Span 2 during the noon swearing-in of Bush. Mass demonstrations against Bush took place in nearly every major city in California and in Seattle, Washington as well. But none, reportedly, were gay-led. Pioneering gay activist and philosopher, Arthur Evans, reported to GayToday his satisfaction at having taken part, however, in San Francisco's boisterous anti-Bush protests. Kunst related to GayToday how "We'd picked up a Washington Post reporter at the Franconia, Virginia train station. While waiting, we discovered we'd already made the Post with a major story about our Florida Freedom protest in Tallahassee. When we got into D.C., there were already hundreds of Republicans waiting to get through security, so we began our protest while waiting in line." "It was really great, because we had all kinds of media—at 7:30 a.m.—and in the meantime there I was-- selling all sorts of "No More Bushit" stickers and buttons. Once we got through, with all of our boxes, we went straight to our previously designated location at Third and Pennsylvania, N.W., but legions of GOPerverts who had to pass us to get to the U.S. Capitol Building got a full taste of our infuriated Floridians fighting back. Then we moved over to Third and Constitution Avenue, N.W. "We were the only group so fortuitously positioned – trading 6 long hours of mutual oral bombast with the Republicans. They shoveled it at us and we shoveled it right back: 'No more Bushit, madam, we've had quite enough, thank you.' " "We were also the first group among the protesters that Bush saw from his limo as it crept slowly forward during the main parade. He heard our Oral Majority chants—we were loud enough to be heard a block away—and we were yelling 'Bush is a fraud! Bush is a thief! Bush stole the election!' "The media people seated on a nearby truck were freaked! Bush's limo window was rolled up, but he heard us anyway. Cheney's window was down. When he saw us, he appeared to have seen a ghost. "The weather, of course, was awful, not counting our having to put up with all those GOP shitheads. What we gone through—such miseries to save our country. We went to Union Station to warm up and inside we sold untold numbers of "No More Bushit" buttons. The many Republicans around us were aghast. It was there met with New York's Al Sharpton, and we all agreed that we'd stay the course. "Besides the Washington Post, we made the Florida Times Union, the Tampa Tribune, the Miami Herald and many other papers." A Pennsylvanian reader e-mailed the following notice to GayToday on Sunday morning: "I saw Bob Kunst on the local team coverage of the inauguration. He was interviewed (crown and all) by Vernon Odom in Washington. Odom is a prominent reporter for WPVI Channel 6, the Philadelphia ABC network affiliate. "Kunst was great. I can't repeat exactly what he said because it all happened too quickly, but he got off a really excellent and succinct statement that Bush stole the election. I also saw, on CNN, a shot which prominently featured the words "NO MORE BUSHIT!" About gay movement non-involvement and the current apparent collaboration of the media with the Bush administration, Kunst said: "Any American, gay or otherwise, who denies that this election was stolen is only inviting a further tyranny through silence." About the media Kunst said: "There are two kinds: Bushit media, protecting Bush behind a façade of objectivity and the other being the media that's willing to look at the issues dispassionately and to print the truth." |
