I’m sorry…. what?

First off: anyone who claims that Mrs. Obama, a very well-educated, eloquent, strong woman, is “a baby mamma” or “angry” (which, it deserves mentioning, I’ve not heard of at ALL) is obviously, as you put it, “full of shit.”

Secondly: Neglectful? I can’t speak for anyone else, but some things just need no rebuttal. Calling Michelle Obama a “baby mama” falls very deep into that territory.

And lastly on to your rather race-centric ruminations that: A) Blacks have been the only ones behind Michelle and B) That this article attempts to ‘claim’ her (whatever that’s supposed to mean) – COME ON!

To apply my own standard, your post was so erroneous that it should probably fall in to the realm of stupidity that needs no rejoinder, but I felt obliged.

-J

Secondly, your remarks about Michelle Obama are just dumb. Just another gay man whistling past the political graveyard. Obama is not as cool as you think and there is NO reason to believe Michelle is going to be anything special because up to now she hasn’t been anything special.

Thirdly, you seem to confuse substance with style. Poor Mary Todd Lincoln suffered so much standing by a husband who was constantly embroiled in controversy and from the early deaths of her children, that it is mean spirited to make fun of her.

But the worst paragraphs were on Eleanor Roosevelt-a politician, great fighter for civil rights for African Americans and women-a giant. And Hillary Clinton who has devoted her entire life to public policies that would help everyone. She was not just a political wife but a brave fighter who lost in an unfair fight with “THE ONE” and his gigantic money machine, $750 million, almost all from lobbyists.

http://pumapac.org

Exactly.

I think she is on that heroin like stuff that you can get over the counter.

Prescription drugs.

Senor Bedwell, thank you for putting Ronald Reagan in perspective! I never heard of Bob Hope about AIDS like that. Frankly, I’m shocked that a TV station would allow that kind of joke to air. That is really twisted.

I also appreciate your taking time to discuss Eleanor Roosevelt, arguably the greatest first lady in the 20th Century.

I honestly didn’t consider her to be “abrasive,” it’s just that the right-wing was absolutely batshit when it came to the Clintons. The only way Michelle Obama has any chance of avoiding that is if she follows the Stepford Wife model that Laura Bush has perfected with the blankest stare I’ve ever seen. What drugs is she on?

Oh Japhy.

Don’t let them get to you. This is what its like. In fact they’ve been nicer to you then the were to the other editor.

I know it sucks when people constantly disrespect because of their own agenda but take the higher road…

but seriously, back to first ladies. did anyone watch Laura Bush’s press conference on Burma a while back? i was absolutely taken aback by how intelligent and thoughtful she was (you know, given the company she keeps). would’ve likely made a better prez than hubby.

and did you honestly register with your *actual* name? on a non-secure site? you truly deserve to have your identity stolen. and your “arguments” were pathetic — and i say that as a person who really couldn’t care less if Lincoln or Shakespeare or Jesus were gay or not. please.

oh, and if you’re looking at this at work, clear your history. wouldn’t want you to be “outed.” duh.

My apologies to both of you. I’ve removed the comment.

My apologies to both of you. I’ve removed the comment.

http://www.amazon.com/Intimate.....0743266390

You have completely violated my privacy by revealing anything about me ( and that info is dated ). Only you know my identity and you have really erred in revealing information about me.

I said “present the work, respect it, and let others decide; and that I did not find it conclusive, but compelling – a most serious scholars do”. You dismissed it a bunk, and revealed information you should not have, and BTW, you idiot, my degree and present work is all about history and the history of philosophy and I have 4 degrees, including a PhD. But you are unprofessional to betray the privacy of one of your readers. I never said I was a Lincoln scholar. you said you were not a serious scholar – which is obvious, you are not even a professional behaving editor – and I replied that I am a serious scholar, and I am.

You have handled this whole matter terribly from your infantile dismissal of someone’s work in your blog, to reducing things to bunk and revealing things that betray my privacy. My view of you has plummeted. I think your readers should know you will betray their privacy when you have run out of intelligent things to say. It is not safe in Queerty.

And you have revealed my name too. You are a real ass.

ER’s legend is not just because of what she did after being First Lady, but actually more for what she did when First Lady, all the more remarkable for the time period. Among many issues, she was far more advanced in terms of the rights of blacks than her husband. While many of us will watch gay Bishop Robinson with great pride at the Lincoln Memorial Sunday, I will also be thinking of the unprecedented tempest that Eleanor created in 1939 when, in addition to shocking White Privilege by resigning from the then hallowed Daughters of the American Revolution after they refused to let black contralto Marian Anderson perform in their-controlled Constitution Hall, she arranged for Anderson to perform on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before an enchanted and ennobled multiracial crowd of 75,000. I still get chills whenever I see film of Anderson and her mesmerizing, “Sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.”

You grossly failed to mention that Hillary was the first First Lady to march in a gay pride parade. Place your bets on who will be the second.

Finally, as one who did not experience the Reagan years as a 5th grader, but was, like countless others, busy burying my friends, abandoned and mocked by Reagan and his thugs, I cannot let stand your “it’s debatable” reductionism of his NON response to AIDS which amounted to passive genocide nor the gilding of his “pink-always-trying-to-be-purple” moll.

First, judged by the company one hires, Reagan’s spokesman, Larry Speakes, laughed at and made fun of the first reporter ever to ask a question about AIDS during a White House press conference.

During the nationally televised rededication of the cleaned-up Statue of Liberty in 1986—within months of “Reagan friend” Rock Hudson’s death from AIDS—Bob Hope said, “I just heard that the Statue of Liberty has AIDS but she doesn’t know if she got it from the mouth of the Hudson or from the Staten Island Ferry.” “As the television camera panned the audience, [French President & Mdm. Mitterand] looked appalled. The Reagans were laughing. By the end of 1989 and the Reagan years, 115,786 women and men had been diagnosed with AIDS in the United States, and more than 70,000 of them had died.” – Michael Bronski

“The Reagan administration has done its best to avoid making even a single helpful AIDS decision in the eight years of the Reagan presidency.” – Congressman Henry Waxman

Reagan daughter, Patti Davis, told “The Advocate”: “[My parents] think [being gay is] abnormal. I certainly don’t think they feel that whatever someone’s sexual preference is, is OK. They think that God made men and women to make love and any variation on that theme is in some way blasphemous.” [Yes, later, she would paint a totally opposite picture. Judge for yourselves.]

After Reagan wrote with crocodile tears about the death from AIDS of teenage hemophiliac Ryan White, NGLTF’s Robert Bray responded;

“We urge our leaders to take action while they hold positions of power, not after they reach the safety of retirement and are outside the spotlight of public scrutiny. Some will salute Mr. Reagan for his post-presidential words on AIDS. But for all the children alienated from their schools because they had HIV, and all the families bombed out of their homes by hysterical neighbors, and all the IV drug users, Black, Hispanic and Asian people with AIDS, and all the gay men who died alone in some anonymous hospital room, for all these people there was no editorial. There was no PSA. There was no Great Communicator offering compassion or action. There was only presidential negligence and a legacy of shame.”

One of the friends I buried was Leonard Matlovich, a year after he was arrested in front of the White House protesting Reagan’s criminal negligence. The powerful Mrs. Reagan was only slightly less culpable.

Thank you.

Michael Bedwell
http://www.leonardmatlovich.com

ahem? Weekly Standard? Let’s see if we can always guess what they will say or not?

I really do think Tripp’s book is bunk and poor scholarship, but I also pointed out that his own former co-author– a serious scholar– said so as well.

Here’s part of what he wrote:

“The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln reaches far beyond the merely dubious. The book is a hoax and a fraud: a historical hoax, because the inaccurate parts are all shaded toward a predetermined conclusion, and a literary fraud, because significant portions of the accurate parts are plagiarized–from me, as it happens.

Tripp and I intended to be coauthors of the book, laboring together on the project from 1995 to 2000–when our partnership, already fissured by dueling manuscripts, came to a bitter end. We quarreled constantly over evidence: I said the Gay Lincoln Theory was intriguing but impossible to prove; he said it was stone-cold fact.

More advocate than historian, Tripp massaged favorable indicators (Lincoln’s early puberty), buried negative ones (Lincoln’s flirtations with women), and papered over holes in his story with inventions (Lincoln’s law partner and biographer William Herndon never noticed the homosexuality because he was an extreme heterosexual and thus afflicted with “heterosexual bias”).”

You can read the rest here: http://www.weeklystandard.com/.....7koqzy.asp

I’m not a serious scholar, but I know a specious argument when I see one. Just because I don’t respect Tripp’s work doesn’t mean I’m anti gay-historical scholarship. My bookshelf is full of great reads and like any lover of history, I have an opinion– and like every blogger, I share it. You’re welcome to dissent, but don’t argue that I have no right to my opinion or that I’m unqualified to comment.

Everyone can comment. That’s why we have this site.

What you glossed over with former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton is that she was a twice elected New York Junior Senator and incoming Madame Secretary of State and finished almost evenly with President-Elect Barack Obama in the Democratic Primaries inspiring future young girls to “Crack the highest ceiling in the Nation.” She was a Great New York Senator, especially after 9/11 when Mayor Giuliani was running out of collapsing buildings while first responders were running in and a President who did not bother to read Daily Terror Threat Memos.

We survived 9/11 thanks to her Star Power and sheer hard work in working across the partisan divide in Congress and tirelessly advocating for the victims and families of September 11th, 2001. You also wrote of Eleanor Roosevelt that she “forged her own path” when in fact she was a trailblazing former First Lady who became US Ambassador to the United Nations.

I guess all that brainiac stuff isn’t so sexy to the Next Top Model types. Whether you like subservient Laura “Crazy Eyes” Bush, Nancy “Astrologer says bomb Iran” Reagan or every queen’s favorite, Jackie O Kennedy who’s most famous dress was blood-splattered, it is the pioneering First Ladies who will provide a role-model to Barack’s Law firm Mentor and soul-mate, Michelle Obama; hopefully a future Madame President on her own accomplishments and not to be shackled by everyone’s Monday-style quarter-backing. I actually liked her “Black Widow” dress at the Democratic Convention.

Let’s just hope the words we don’t hear in the White House are:

“Not the Nancy Reagan Chandelier!”

Hillary Clinton/ Michelle Obama 2016!

The whole Is Lincoln a Homosexual debate is one my personal bugbears, actually. I’d recommend “Lincoln’s Melancholy’ for a more nuanced perspective of Lincoln’s relationships with men.

That said, I love that I get to come to work and have conversations like these with readers.

The Warren incident has taken some of the shine off her husband, but I do adore Mrs. O.

I would only also note that Michelle does not want a creepy whispery baby voice like Jackie Kennedy. So beautiful in photographs, so disconcerting in audio.