“You Are Now Free To Move About The Country” became a wildly outdated slogan for Southwest Airlines as of this week. Perhaps the addition of the phrase “If Not A Minority” would help.
Today we celebrate federal acknowledgment in the U.S. that same-sex love is love period. We celebrate the ease with which committed gay couples all over the country can fortify lives together, and that those lives will be protected under the law, just as they have been for their straight counterparts. We celebrate the act of putting into writing the assertion that gays are no longer second-class citizens. It is so ordered that gay people are people, too.
It has been established, through documents uncovered during a federal probe, that the municipal government running Ferguson, Mo., is fundamentally racist. And now today, following public records requests made by the Guardian and other outlets, we have the full offensive emails sent between three Ferguson employees over the past seven years.
A passel of racist, homophobic text messages sent between at least five San Francisco police officers were released last Friday as part of a motion by the U.S. Attorney's office to deny bail to Ian Furminger, a former SFPD sergeant recently convicted on federal corruption charges and a primary actor in the series of bigoted texts.
On last night's episode of Lifetime's housewives-with-a-genetic-twist reality show, Little Women L.A., the titular women frolicked around Las Vegas for dual bachelorette festivities. One of these was a scavenger hunt, which found them intermingling with the general public. There were two confrontations resulting from the rudeness of gawking average-sized people (or A.P.'s for short). In one instance, a guy openly took pictures of them, and in another, a woman referred to cast member Brianna as "cute."
Collin Dewberry and Kelly Williams were picking up the check after eating at Big Earl's Restaurant in Pittsburg, Texas when their waitress told them: "We don't serve fags here." She went on to clarify: "Here at Big Earl's we like for men to act like men and for ladies to act like ladies, so we want you to never return." Turns out that's the restaurant's official bigoted policy.
The Westboro Baptist Church has at last found its medium. The hate group's over-the-top brand of expressing bigotry for basically anyone who isn't them, it turns out, is perfectly suited for the cut-heavy, silliness-fueled, 6-second world of Vining. It's like they've been an avant garde art project this whole time and only now can they fully express it.
During a segment on the government shutdown yesterday, Fox News host Anna Kooiman claimed that President Obama has "has offered to pay out of his own pocket for the museum of Muslim culture." Problem being, besides the complete lie she told about the president, is that a museumby that name in Washington D.C. doesn't even exist.
A letter filled with hateful language that was sent to a family with an autistic child has shocked an entire community.
Last night, Discovery aired KKK: Beneath the Hood, a documentary that purported to offer previously unavailable access to various Ku Klux Klan chapters. Such unveiling feels like an act of desperation for a dying breed of people who are irrationally fixated on racial purity and white supremacy while claiming that they don't hate anyone. Bigotry is alive, of course, but I wonder how well it is when even the Klan is too cowardly to own up to its hatred. (Note: Hamilton Nolan's "My Kasual Kountry Weekend With the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan" Gawker story from last year touches on this very phenomenon.)
Alien-acid queen, movie-crit staple and star of the infamous 1970 flop Myra Breckinridge Rex Reed describes Identity Thief star Melissa McCarthy as "tractor-sized," "humongous" and a "female hippo" in his Observer review of Seth Gordon's probable hit, which opens this weekend. These words are uncivil and the product of an intolerant mindset that's a huge problem in our culture. No one deserves to be referred to as such, especially not in such a public forum. Rex Reed is an asshole.
Here is all you need to know about the hypocrisy of the modern gentle bigot, who argues against people's rights while claiming no ill will, courtesy of the New York Times' profile of Prop 8 mastermind and tireless homophobe Frank Schubert:
