I adore Rosie O'Donnell. Even in her abrasiveness, I think she is a good-hearted person who feels passionately about so many of the issues I care about. I also think Elizabeth Hasselbeck is a moron. I could respect her views while disagreeing with them if she wasn't so vapid, spewing whatever talking points she heard on conservative radio that morning rather than contributing an idea of her own. That said, they both have some boundary issues, and someone needs to fill those mugs up with a big old glass of shut the hell up.
Their latest dust-up is all over the blogs, and it is a doozy. If I were Baba Wawa, I would suspend both of them for acting so unprofessional, AND I would make them polish all my diamond shoes, clean the marble lap pool in my bathroom, and rub my bunions every night for a month because I'm Baba Wawa, dammit! Their behavior wasn't surprising, though. Neither was the response on the gay blogs. As soon as a female conservative with a rather nasty point of view surfaces in the gay media, commenters on the blogs pull out the "C" word. And I for one am sick of that view.
Seriously, this is not acceptable, people. The "C" word is the sexist version of Faggot (and yes, I use that one...I got called it from the time I was six, it took me 20 years to fight back against it, and by golly I own that word!). If we really want people to take us seriously when we bitch about bigotry, we have to look at ourselves first. After all, so many gay folks are progressive, and so many others are some of the biggest bigots you will ever meet.
A couple of weeks ago, I was getting my wig split at the same Fantastic Sam's I always go to (because I'm cheap and I don't have much hair). Instead of the hot Middle Eastern man I like, they gave me to this tanorexic over-processed blond queen who had effed up my stuff the last time I was there. I decided to give him another chance. So we're chatting, and I'm telling him about how I quit my job and went back to school because you know I don't shut up about all that. He tells me his dream was to quit doing hair and become a vet tech because animal welfare is so important to him, especially dogs. I asked him if he had heard the awful story about the NFL player busted with 75 dogs he'd been training to fight, all of which were horribly abused. He leaned forward all conspiratorily and whispered, "Was he black?"
Set aside the fact of what the hell difference does that make. Why would he think I would approve of that comment? That's the thing with racists...they think that all white folks are part of their "club." The gay white racists are the worst about that "club" business, as though being in such an exclusive group, one that gets dumped on as well, gives us the right to exclude others in the same manner. I'm not proud of the fact that I didn't go off on him, though in my defense, my hair was half cut and he had a pair of scissors around my head. I suppose my face said it all because he changed the subject immediately.
I left that salon wondering what I should have said. I hate for someone to lose a job, but he knew what he was doing was racist, otherwise he wouldn't have leaned in and whispered it to me. It weighed on me for a couple of weeks before I finally wrote in to their corporate headquarters and reported him. It's a tough economy, and business people need to realize that racism is not acceptable. Plus this bitch made the same mistake as last time, resulting in another month of an Opie Taylor cowlick on the side of my damn head, so you know he needs to go!
My point here, and I do have one, is that gay folks often shoot themselves in the foot, demanding equality one minute, and dividing up along racial, gender, and class lines the next to exclude others. Getting called a faggot as a kid and not having equal rights as an adult does not give me the right to call a woman the "C" word, no matter how rancid Hasselbeck is. Go after her because she is dumber than a box of hammers. Say that eating bugs on "Survivor" does not qualify her to be spokesmodel for the Republican Party (and it isn't like their standards are all that high these days!). Just don't start throwing around words that reduce a woman to her genitals, the implication of which has always been that her genitals are all she is worth. It is sexist, it is beneath us, and frankly, we're supposed to be a bit more creative than all that.
