Awww, he's a CUTE gay wingnut though!
Oh good, we were worried Fox News wingnuts would be too far up the ass of their belief that the Orlando mass shootings mean that ISIS is literally AT OUR DOOR, and would forget to engage in just a little subtle gay-bashing, since the victims at the Pulse nightclub were, you know, gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
[wonkbar]<a href="https: //wonkette.substack.com/p/anderson-cooper-tells-florida-attorney-general-pam-bondi-to-sit-her-ass-down"></a>[/wonkbar]One of the subplots in last week's coverage of the tragedy was when gay journalist Anderson Cooper, who is a gay, dared to question Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, about her long record of using her position of power to inflict harm on gays. Cooper, of course, was not having Bondi's crocodile tears about "our LGBT community," when she's been such a staunch advocate for fucking over "our LGBT community" in the past.
A couple of morons on Fox News, Howie Kurtz and Guy Benson, conserva-homo political editor of Townhall.com, decided to have a little chat about that:
KURTZ: I respect Anderson Cooper and I think he's generally fair, but in this interview with Pam Bondi, do you think he was acting as more than just an aggressive journalist?
BENSON: Yeah, he seemed like an activist. And I share your sentiments and general thoughts on Anderson Cooper, of course I only watch Fox all the time [ haha! - Ed.] but I've heard he's very good at his job, he's a versatile journalist.
KURTZ: But here?
BENSON: In this circumstance, I thought the line of questioning for the attorney general of Florida, under the circumstances and given the context of what had just happened in that state, it was a bizarre non sequitur . And it seemed like he was browbeating her for really unrelated political thought-crimes in her past, which did not relate to the task at hand, which is roundly condemning the atrocity that had happened.
Let's hit the pause button. It was not "thought-crimes." Bondi's crimes against the LGBT community are decidedly ACTION CRIMES. And in the immediate aftermath of the shootings, when many Florida Republicans and Republicans from all the rest of US America couldn't even bring themselves to acknowledge that the people murdered, many of them, were gay, and that it happened at a GAY BAR, it was extremely relevant to take a public official to task for her history of hurting the very same victims.
[wonkbar]<a href="https: //wonkette.substack.com/p/donald-trump-yells-more-at-messican-judge-in-trump-university-suit-forgets-one-weird-trick"></a>[/wonkbar]We hear this shit all the time from wingnuts, typically about journalists and judges. That a judge with Mexican heritage is too biased to adjudicate a case, because Donald Trump has this weird habit of saying racist badstupid things about Mexicans. That the gay judge in California's Prop 8 case, Vaughn Walker, shouldn't have been allowed to rule on a case involving gay marriage, because of his big gay "conflict of interest."
And we've heard this before about Anderson Cooper, specifically. It's not new!
Go on, idiot Fox News boys:
KURTZ: Even if she had gone to court to argue against same-sex marriage in Florida, did that make her a bigot?
BENSON: No!
KURTZ: Was that the underlying premise of Cooper's questioning?
BENSON: It was. And I think ... the only way that this line of questioning makes sense is if your underlying assumption is that any opposition to any form of gay rights legislation is rooted in bigotry or hatred. ... I don't know what's in her heart, I'm not going to assume that because she defended the state's gay marriage ban, she herself is hateful ...
Yeah, OK, bored now. We hate to throw around terms like quisling , but there is a reason conservative gay commentators and political activists have been called that over the years. To his credit, Benson did say that for him, personally, as a gay man, this mass shooting was a special kind of awful for him, and it's good that he did. And we agree, we do not know what is in Pam Bondi's heart. (Scrunchies, probably.)
But as attorney general, Bondi had leeway in whether to defend a type of marriage ban judges all across the country were finding at odds with the United States Constitution. She had the authority to step up and say, "Nuh uh." She chose differently. She and her legal team, instead, argued over and over again that gay marriage would "impose significant public harm" on the people of Florida. She deserves to be called on that.
Maybe Guy Benson is the one unqualified to report on things like this. Not because he's gay, but because he's too obsessed with being sweet to the bigots he's surrounded himself with to ask them any tough questions about their actual records, of shitting on people like him.
[ Crooks & Liars ]
Yes, I meant residency, not internship. That's another reason I can't become a doctor now. I'm getting too old to remember things.
I'm shocked! Shocked! Howard Kurtz still has a job???