World of Intolerance

I was crushed last night when Allison Iraheta was sent home on American (only white men need apply) Idol. In a perfect world, the young woman who's initials are the same as those of the show she was recklessly cast out of, would have won. Best of luck to Allison and her future endeavours, now on with the rant.

I am not unreceptive to the chances of the first "gay" Idol. However, the show is truly shaping up to be the entertainment equivalent of the ignorance and intolerance we see all around us in the world today. A perceived good versus evil competition and depending on where your politics, ethics, and sexual orientation lay, will shape who you see as good and who you see as evil.

As anyone who spends any time on the Internet can tell you, messages boards, or comments on news pieces are a haven for trolls and vitriol spewing anonymous cowards. So while you may want to take this all with a grain of salt, there are still people behind these comments that think it is ok to hate and share their hateful beliefs.

As a lesbian, who has been happily in a relationship for 7 years now, I am happy with who I am. But because of Adam Lambert, because of Michael Slezak (a writer for EW.com) and because of these so called Christians that support that talentless hack Danny GOkey... (never said I was going to be not biased) homosexuality, gay marriage, racial profiling and other political topics are littered through out this years AI message boards.

It started out innocently enough I suppose, with the Adam Lambert pictures that surfaced early on in the competition. Certainly other AI contestants had been plagued by various scandals, and really was there anyone who really believed Clay Aiken was straight? But Adam seemed to mostly avoid the controversy until morons like Bill O'Reiley began thumping about the depravity of it all, a gay Idol.

But it has ramped up, I have seen so much hatred towards Allison, who if you watch her interactions, even before Rock Week with her fellow contestants, was just adorable. Just as much of a teenager as you want, but when it came time to perform, she was a professional and transformed into a potential star performer. Yet out came the trolls and the haters, in fact she was quite often referred to as a "troll doll" and bashed constantly for picking "adult" song choices.

I believe Allison really never established a fan base, not just because she was not that prepackaged Miley Cyrus, cotton candy tween idol, but because she does not fit the mold. Nor does Adam Lambert. So apparently this is a reason to hate by a lot of self proclaimed Christians who condemn homosexuality as the greatest of all sins. Honestly, I thought I had seen the passing of this kind of behavior in the nineties, and yet hear it is a decade and a half later rearing its ugly head.

Your right to love is not equal to that of straight people. Which brings us to the point of this rant, Adam Vs Danny, good vs evil or evil vs good depending on how butter your bread. In a time when gay marriage and equal rights for everyone, gay, straight, American or Immigrant. In a time when our first black president would like to see us united not further divided. We have this almost comically being played out on of all things, American Idol.

Neither of these men asked to be placed in these boxes of the Gay man vs the Church going straight man, but it exists. It is played out in chat rooms, message boards, Twitter and Facebook every week. It is getting hotly contested and neither side is backing down. I think it will be very interesting to see what happens when one of these two men wins the reality competition.

Or neither do, I do not with to be unfair to Kris Allen, but he has just been dragged along for the ride and while he may well win, or be the second finalist. He simply has not been anything other than that dreamy guy, which is probably why he will end up with a third place finish over the more talented fourth place troll doll.

So now that I have woven too many thoughts together in this muddled tapestry. The point I am trying to make is that our fascination with show, is mirroring our prejudices and beliefs in real life. Neither is right or wrong, and yet both are right, everyone has to think their opinion is the right and correct one, or they would not have it or such a fierce desire to defend that belief.

So next time you want to call someone a dyke on Twitter or draw penis shapes on images of certain reality show contestants. The next time you insist that certain widowers who work for churches are somehow more deserving to win reality shows. The next time you group all Christians into one lump and question why the male columnist is referring to his husband. Just stop. Stop and think what you saying, and how that may effect other people's feelings. Don't we have enough hate in this world without adding to it over the manipulations of TV producers just in it for a buck. Is really worth it?

Feeling Less Ranty

So the rant business has not been good for me lately, I still have my daily rants... about work, minor things, whatever. But nothing major, nothing rant on about it in my blog at great length on and on, pretty tame stuff.

Or maybe I am just a lazy writer. Probably a bit of both...

Couple quick things, a toned down rant, left over from CES on Sunday. Spent quite a bit of time at the San Disk booth, because of their Rock Band 2 competition, and Rock Band swag. If my entire RB group had access to the show, we probably would have competed. We had to settle for their Harrah's party / gathering where we showed our chops in the Piano Bar. We had some fun there and the traveling group that ran the set up asked back when, they will be back in Vegas come March.

But, back to San Disk, so Sunday, the same basically 6-8 ppl that competed in this so called contest on Friday, were the only ones I saw playing on Sunday. I am not really sure how much of the fix was in, but it looked bad to me. It was pretty disappointing and then I could not even get any good swag from them. I took pictures, I sat there, I stood there, pffft nothing.

It has forced me to start practicing my guitar and singing chops on a daily basis. Must gain Rock Band chops fame...

Minor Rant part two... Catching the Thom Hartman show on the commute home tonight, he relayed a piece that really had me pinching myself. I seriously had to think to myself if I was awake or dreaming and why IN THE HELL this information had not been more brought to light.

Get this, in 1974 two flunkies from the Nixon / Ford administration came out stated as fact, FACT, that the Russians were developing weapons of mass destruction. That we as a country needed to be afraid, and pour millions of dollars into defense contractors to protect us from this threat. The CIA said, no such thing, it was made up. The names of the flunkies, Rumsfeld and Cheney...

Minor rant out.

Election Day Blues

Last night I was contemplating that I had not had much to rant about of late. Well all it takes is a little right wing radio and a presidental race to wipe out that notion, because I have plenty to rant about now.

So as I try and follow the early returns on the election, lines, problems, voting machine problems, I am scouring my mobile devices for some news. The TV application on my personal phone is not behaving, the news feed on my business phone is down, FM radio on my digital media player, let's give it try.

It pops right over to the low end of the dial and finds the NPR station, sounds good right. Not so much. I have been hearing how NPR has gone increasingly right wing, driven there by it's board of directors, and I would have to agree. Because I was assaulted with 15 minutes of horrifingly ignorant hatred filled garbage spewn by the morons on this show.

But let me digress for one moment to make the following points:

Barrack Obama does NOT support Gay Marriages, only civil unions. Neither he or Hillary Clinton would go so far as to proclaim their support of marriages, they only said they would support civil unions and equal benefits to those of married couples. Yes I am Gay, but have no interest in getting married.

The media had done a good job of trying to get out information about the voter myths, to try and curb the voter fraud that has occured in this country the past two presidential elections. The myths such as you will be arrested if you have unpaid parking tickets, you cannot vote if you go to college in a different state, and the biggest myth, it is illegal to wear support items at the polls. Stickers, buttons, tshirts etc, while they are discouraged in some places, they are NOT illegal.

11 million people play World of Warcraft, and they are not all sloths that live in their parents basements, never see the sunlight and have no lives. Yes I play World of Warcraft and I have a life.

So I flip on this station and what is the first thing I hear, "...Barrack Obama is going to subsidize the wedding cakes for gay marriages." Huh??? What??? See above note, Obama does not support them, there is no gay agenda, in fact I was pretty pissed at the lack of gay support from any Democractic hopefulls prior to Obama becoming the nominee. Oh and on an unrelated (to politics at least) side note, DIAF ABC for firing Brooke Smith.

So, this show was asking listeners to call in and let them know about their election day plans. A woman called in and wanted to ask an etiquette question, she relayed her story from today. She was at her polling place with an Obama sticker on the back of her jacket, another woman in line behind her ripped it off and told her it was illegal. Again IT'S NOT ILLEGAL.

The whack job hosts then railed her about it is illegal, that the other woman should have set it on fire and that she must be calling from jail. Are you kidding ME? This poor woman thought at first they were joking and totally bought into that she had done something illegal, sick, just sick.

The next poor fellow to call in explained how his World of Warcraft guild would be doing an event this evening to celebrate the election. That they did not discuss too much about politics to avoid trouble from differentining opinions, but it was nice to have an event to encourage people to get out and vote. He was then mocked, after he hung up as the woman on this chuckle fest proclaims, well that from what she knows about WOW, "those people never leave their homes, so it was great people were getting out." One of the chuckleheads also chimed in, that they normally only "vote for their avatars in Second Life."

I knew it was going to be a long day today.

About Rants

Rants, I love to rant, really who doesn't. I rant about video games, politics, my job, sports, whatever comes to mind. I have an opinion. I usually try to segregate my different interests into like categories, but a rant is a rant is a rant.

This will be my rant forum and will touch on all of the subjects above and probably a few others not mentioned. Check it out if you feel so inclined to read one persons opinion on a wide variety of subjects.

Cheers