It's Time For 'TALKIN' GAY,' With Rachel Maddow And Mayor Pete!

This was just a really good interview.

That's right, Wonkers, it is time for another post about Mayor Pete Buttigieg, because everybody is feeling the BUTT-MENTUM, and you're just along for the ride! Yesterday, we all watched Mayor Pete's official campaign announcement speech, which made everybody cry a lot or something (FULL DISCLOSURE have not watched actually). On Monday night, Buttigieg was Rachel Maddow's guest, and they talked about pretty much everything, but what was most interesting to us, from our own gay perspective, was their rather personal talk about coming out and what that means just in general, and now especially for somebody who is legit running for president of the United States.

Maddow acknowledged at the beginning of the conversation that it was a bit different from other times when she's questioned candidates, because of how she herself is a lesbian and has personal experience with coming out. Maddow also noted that she and Buttigieg were both Rhodes scholars, and that she was the first openly gay American Rhodes scholar. Buttigieg, meanwhile, came out much later at 33. How did that work for him? Maddow said for her, personally, it would have killed her to stay in the closet so long. Her question, specifically, was was it hurtful to experience that much time in the closet.

Like we said, it's a different conversation from the one you're going to see with any of the other candidates, or a conversation with another journalist. It's almost a moment that, if we're being honest, as a gay person, feels intensely familiar. So it's more than a little bit surreal that it's a conversation with one of the higher-polling candidates in the Democratic primary:

Pete Buttigieg On Coming Out As Gay: 'You Only Get To Be One Person' | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC    www.youtube.com   

"It took me plenty of time to come out to myself," said Buttigieg. "I needed to not be. There's this war that breaks out inside a lot of people, when they realize they might be something they're afraid of." Behind every openly LGBT person's coming out story is a sometimes more personally significant story, of when we came out to ourselves . It might not immediately make sense as a concept for YOU CISHETS, but it's a moment of acceptance, where one travels the distance to actually being OK with it. For lucky people, that's a quick moment and happens pretty much concurrently with the initial realization that you're different. For others, it can take years. (We personally were 19 when we came out, both to ourselves and to others, after being in the closet as long as we could remember.)

Holy crap, to all LGBTs reading, we are talking about this with a person running for president .

Buttigieg talked about the conflict he felt as a person serving in the military and as an elected official, that weird thing many LGBT people experience where they really give a shit about what they're doing in life, and for some reason it feels like they have to choose between that thing and living authentically. Spoiler alert, it sucks.

But eventually, after he was elected mayor, the moment came, he came out, he was re-elected with 80 percent of the vote, and here we are! Pete Buttigieg, who is married to Chasten, is an out gay man, people like him quite a lot, and oh yeah, he simply will not stop giving Mike Pence shit for being a gigantic bigot.

As the conversation was ending, Buttigieg said, "You only get to be one person. You don't know how long you have on this earth," and added that whatever happens with his campaign, he hopes he can "make it a little easier, just by being here, for the next [LGBT] person who comes along."

After the interview was over, Maddow reflected on the conversation she had just had with Buttigieg, during her handover with Lawrence O'Donnell. She specifically talked about why she, as a gay woman, wanted to talk to Buttigieg, a gay man, about his experience of the closet. Watch that by clicking this link right here:

Rachel Maddow on 'when it comes to coming out' https: //t.co/pITVwm59S1 via @msnbc

— Evan Hurst (@Evan Hurst) 1555447824.0 

Hey CISHETS! Don't you feel like you are learning things about the gays right now?

If you haven't watched it yet, this all reminds us of the part of Buttigieg's announcement speech this weekend, where he talked about what he would tell the 17-year-old version of himself if he could, which, again, haven't watched, we're going by Wonkette's helpful summary:

To tell him he'll be all right. More than all right. To tell him that one rainy April day, before he even turns forty, he'll wake up to headlines about whether he's rising too quickly as he becomes a top-tier contender for the American presidency. And to tell him that on that day he announces his campaign for president, he'll do it with his husband looking on.

MAN, we should really watch that speech, shouldn't we!

The whole Maddow interview is worth watching. In the first section, Buttigieg talks about striking the balance between advocating specific policies vs . winning the argument against Republicans on values, and how best to do both. That leads into a conversation about what in the actual hell American values are, an important conversation in this time of trying to save America from Donald Trump, particularly as Trump plays footsie with Vladimir Putin while scratch 'n' sniffing Kim Jong Un's love notes. Then they talk about the impending release of Bill Barr's redacted version of the Mueller report, with Buttigieg dispelling the notion that we're going to find out some smoking gun thing that tells everybody what a horrible piece of shit Trump is, because WE ALREADY KNOW THAT.

Want more video? Here's more video of Buttigieg talking about calling for national service as part of his campaign platform, citing his experience in the Navy and what he learned there.

Pete Buttigieg Pushes National Service To Boost National Cohesion | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC    www.youtube.com   

Also Mayor Pete said he and his husband Chasten have been talking about having kids but those plans sound like they're kind of slowed down for the moment because SOME DICKHEAD is quote unquote "running for president," what a dickhead THAT dickhead sounds like, FUCKIN' DICK, THE END.

Hey, have an OPEN THREAD!

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