Should Obama have come out of the closet for gay marriage?

My gut tells me "no," because I feel his re-election is absolutely crucial for the future of the country. Although perhaps I should really say, "if the country is to have a future;" I'm not at all sure we can survive a resurgent Republican party with a smarmy milquetoast like Mitt Romney in the White House.  And therefore I worry over any fresh ammunition the Tea Party crazies have to hand.

But, my gut could be wrong.  Certainly this keeps Obama on the moral high ground, and of course on the right side of history.  Let's just hope we can make it safely through November . . . .

The Shepard Fairey boomerang

Bad art, meet bad politics: Shepard Fairey and Yosi Sergant at the ICA.

If you have a genuine life, you probably haven't been paying attention to the NEA brouhaha that has been brewing over the past few weeks. Long story short, red-state, neocon and "birther" sites have been bubbling over a recent NEA conference call, apparently led by NEA Communications Director Yosi Sergant (above, with you-know-who), during which, as progressive bête noire FoxNews says, it was apparent that the NEA was soliciting work from artists that could further the Obama administration's agenda.

In a word, this kind of thing is wrong. It was wrong when the Bush administration did it, and it's wrong when the Obama administration does it. The NEA should not be sponsoring propaganda, even if it tiptoes around the letter of the law to solicit it, and even if the initiatives in question are desirable.

After the outcry, Sergant was initially demoted; yesterday he resigned. It seems to me a few more heads should roll at the NEA, but this may be enough to stem the political hemorrhage for the time being. (The White House has also issued new "guidelines" for its communications.) What the Obama administration needs least is any defensible critique that could legitimize the nutjobs on the far right.

I've been dismayed, however, by the reaction of the reliably-lefty cultural blogosphere to all this (needless to say, they're appalled that anyone could oppose the politicization of the NEA when it comes to their own politics). So I just thought I'd say out loud: I thought Yosi Sergant should go, and I'm glad to see his exit has come to pass. I'm sure I'm not the only cultural observer to think this (perhaps privately, in most cases), but I would like to add one new twist to the ongoing debate:

This isn't just good for Obama, it's actually good for art. When politics become the justification for art, you wind up with second-rate, feel-good agitprop like the posters of Shepard Fairey (above, with Sergant, at the ICA, in some kind of cosmic alignment of middlebrow cultural posturing). If we want truly great art, we must always battle the political assumptions that have covered so many academic and artistic institutions like group-think kudzu. So maybe FoxNews has proven to be good for something after all.

Hello and good-bye to all that

Can you see Obama? Yes, I was this far away, but it still felt worth it.

Well, I'm back from an exhausting, but generally exciting and exhilarating Inauguration Day. A day that started earlier than I expected - I awoke spontaneously this morning at 4 AM (coincidentally - perhaps - the time the Mall opened for visitors) and couldn't get back to sleep. My buddy Alton, with whom I'm staying, told me I was acting like a kid on Christmas morning, but I still prevailed on him to get a move on earlier than planned. By 7:30 AM we were down on the Mall, in 18-degree weather.

It was already crowded, but we managed to find a spot about halfway down its length before the crowd got so dense we began to feel claustrophobic. This left us in front of the Smithsonian's "castle" building, with a good view of a nearby jumbotron, and an unimpeded view of the Capitol (although the people on its stages were smaller than ants, see above). Then all we had to do was wait more than four hours in sub-freezing temperatures before, at last, our long national nightmare would come to an end.

The crowd was well-behaved and friendly, but I wonder if folks who watched the network coverage felt the actual vibe coming off the Mall during the ceremony. Bush and Cheney were loudly booed and hissed, as you'd expect, as were Joe Lieberman and Clarence Thomas. Big cheers, on the other hand, greeted Colin Powell, Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, and the Clintons. John McCain got a frosty, but respectful, response. The crowd went nuts for the Obamas, of course, with particularly wild cheers for Michelle and the girls. The relief over Michelle's gorgeous but daring outfit was palpable, and noted audibly. Aretha sounded great. And the sun came out - and the temperature rose to near freezing. I could almost feel my toes. Best of all, I was still taller than anyone who had pushed their way in front of me; I could still see both the jumbotron and the tiny ants playing with the tiny Bible on the little white stage before the Capitol. Still, things were, by noon, fairly claustrophobic across the Mall, although standing cheek-by-jowl with over a million other human beings is, in its way, an experience worth having. You'll certainly never forget it.

The fluff around the swearing-in was odd, but funny, and of course Obama was unflappable as ever; a brief debate erupted in the crowd over who, exactly, had gone wrong first, but was quickly silenced. And all at once Obama was President, and suddenly, it seemed to me that everything had become slightly unreal - was this actually happening? Was I really there? But then The Speech began, in powerful sunshine, and was wonderful in that it hit all the right points, and was oh-so-pointed regarding the record of you-know-who, who was just a few feet away. Still, it wasn't all that eloquent, and certainly not even in the ballpark of Lincoln's Second Inaugural, which everyone had been referring to constantly over the past few days. It was sober and thoughtful, but perhaps not inspiring. Oh, well! Even though my partner has begun referring to Obama as "the Messiah," I guess he's not yet the equal of Lincoln, at least not when it comes to rhetoric!

And then it was all over - and the huge downside of the event came into sharp focus: the city and the inaugural committee had really devised no exit strategy for the nearly two million visitors camping before the Capitol. All the streets around the parade route to the White House were blocked off - as was my way of entry, via the Washington Monument. It took me well over an hour just to get off the Mall - and this was only accomplished by enduring often-frightening onslaughts of confused, oncoming crowds, and hopping the odd blockade or two. Still, the delay allowed me to catch a glimpse of the helicopter that whisked W. off to Texas again. I doubt he noticed, but a group was serenading his departure from near the Monument, warbling that old kiss-off tune, "Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah, nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah, hey he-ey, GOOD-BYE!" I may have never heard a sweeter sound. But what made it all the more wonderful was the sense that after some eight years of mistakes and malfeasance, we did good this time.

Why all the conservative gay-hate for Hillary?

Okay, this is off-topic, but it is something I've been wondering about, and it does at least partly concern the larger culture: why do Internet queens Andrew Sullivan (right) and Matt Drudge (below) hate, hate, hate Hillary Clinton quite so much, much, much? I leaned toward Hillary over Obama (although I'm happy to vote for him) because - can we be honest? - Obama is so obviously a blank slate, and in his short career he's never made much of an impression, except on the political pulpit. In fact, somehow I sense from him a certain disinterest in even getting things done in principle. Those imagining this paleoliberal messiah will be able to usher in a post-polarized paradise I think may be in for a very unpleasant surprise. But hey, I could be wrong - and after all, just because the Clintons ran the government supremely well once before, why the hell should we invite them back? I mean, that would mean facing the threat of oral sex in the Oval Office!

But oh yeah, what I wanted to write about - the general hatred of the press for Hillary, and the intriguing fact that this is best channeled by two conservative homosexuals on the Net. I know, I know, Drudge is supposed to be closeted, but please - I don't see why we have to play along with his private psychological drama here. So my question is: are these two representative of gay conservatism in general, and is gay conservatism actually representative of something in the culture at large?

I guess the nub of this admittedly amorphous query is American sexism, and how the Hillary-Obama match-up seems to hint what many have suspected but never articulated: that this country is more deeply sexist than it is racist. Rush Limbaugh can openly call Hillary a 'bitch' or a 'feminazi,' but he wouldn't dare trade in racial stereotypes with Obama. Or will he, eventually? Will racism, in the end, turn out to be just as virulent as the sexism that's apparent now?

That's entirely possible, but just this minute I'm intrigued by our sexism, and how it's being reflected in these gay commentators. There's a general perception that gay men and straight women share some sort of Sex-in-the-City-like sisterhood, but it isn't really true; in the end, gay men are men, not women, and there's a surprisingly nasty sexism that often surfaces out of our gossip and conversation. There's also often a lingering animosity between gay men and lesbians (who have reportedly been prominent in Hillary's circles). Yes, gay sexism exists, and it could certainly manifest itself against Ms. Clinton.

Still, making this simple case against Drudge and Sullivan (Sullivudge? Drullivan?) is tough, because both are such slippery customers. Drudge, of course, is hard to analyze because he doesn't really write that much, and his eponymous Report is a wacky, pack-rat mosaic in which space aliens and bat boy schmooze with Putin and Bush. Drudge's background is in McDonald's and 7-11 management, and it shows. It's easy to view him - via the lens of affectionate patronization - as more a trailer park eccentric than some envious Internet queen.

As for Sullivan - well, like the rest of the cream of Oxbridge and Harvard, he can push out a rich chunk of rhetoric from the old mental sphincter faster than just about anyone. But at the same time, even his fans I think would admit he's batshit-crazy; indeed, that's part of the fun of reading him: he's got the intriguing charisma that comes from being very fucked up, and his edge of hysteric, indignant offense is always pushing against the polished surface of his prose. Then there's the simple outline of his personal history: the promiscuous gay bottom who demands the right to marry within the Church, the conservative who claims he was pro-Gore (though he generally eviscerated Gore), then cheered on Bush before turning on him, too, all while insisting that Catholicism can be reconciled with libertarianism - really, the list of contradictions is just too long and too weird. I mean not many village sluts would have the cojones to demand a white wedding from the Pope, but Sullivan's up to the challenge. And this is, interestingly, what makes him so American; he often rhapsodizes about his love for our country, and I believe him, because we're insane in exactly the same way he is: we, too, are piously pseudo-religious, and believe fervently, if incoherently, in our right to perpetually, indignantly re-invent ourselves.

Some, of course, might ponder Sullivan's hatred of Hillary as actually a kind of endorsement (after all, he said of Gore things like: "fundamentally a political coward . . . a corpulent Cassandra . . . weaselly . . . one of the most naked opportunists in American politics"). And Sullivan's often driven by personal vendetta under the cover of principle (his long campaign against Howell Raines, who reportedly fired him from the Times, is one example). So maybe the current vitriol is just payback from the nineties. And is Drudge, meanwhile, still in some sort of psychological battle with his liberal, Jewish parents? Perhaps. Still, it's worth pondering the meaning of the curious correspondence between these two gay scourges.