LIES AND THE LYING LIARS

" Hillary's top NC surrogate bashes gays in front of her this morning, she does nothing."

This is a reference to remarks made by North Carolina governor Easley, who just yesterday endorsed Hillary's candidacy for president. What, you ask, did he SAY?

After touring a bio-manufacturing training center, Gov. Easley, First Lady of North Carolina Mary Easley and Clinton held a ceremony at NC State University. The Governor formally expressed his support saying that there was "nothing I love more than a strong powerful woman." Easley concluded his remarks saying Clinton -- "makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy".

This is getting to be more ridiculous by the minute. I use the words pansy, weenie, wuss all the time to describe a weakling, male or female, and it never even occurred to me that anyone would read an anti-gay message into it. Aravosis really needs to consider which is worse, a former Edwards supporter implying that Hillary is more of a fighter than Rocky and in the course of it using the word "pansy," which few use as slang for "gay" but many use to describe weakness; or a conscious decision by Obama himself, the actual candidate, to give an unabashedly gay-bashing gospel singer cum preacher like Donnie McClurkin a platform to air his hateful opinions by inviting him to open an Obama rally.

And "top surrogate"? Since when did Easley join Hillary's campaign staff?

It's not even close unless you're determined to lie about Hillary in every way possible in order to discredit her and crown Obama. The blogger boyz have proven to be willing to do just that.

UPDATE: Oh, for heaven's sake. The usually semi-reasonable Atrios joins in.

OBAMA AND GAY AMERICA

I'm mystified as to why prominent gay Americans such as John Aravosis would be so pro-Obama. Here's just a sample of John's previous posts about Obama's embrace of homophobic entertainer Donnie McClurkin. What has happened to make John so pro-Obama? He wasn't always.

I wonder if it isn't just a matter of wanting to be one of the Kool Kidz, like Josh Marshall and Markos Moulitsas, those intrepid Obamabots.

One of the first things Bill Clinton tried to do as president was to enable gays to serve openly in the military. That took a lot of guts, when it was obvious that the anti-Clinton armed forces (He tried to get a draft deferment, for gosh sakes! He opposed the Vietnam War!) would have a hissy fit. When Colin Powell and other top generals had that predictable swoon, he had to settle for the "Don't ask, don't tell" compromise, which was still an improvement over the past. Clinton's efforts to enfranchise gays into mainstream society could have, and effectually did, compromised his entire relationship with the military brass, which he knew was fragile at best. But he stuck his chin out nonetheless.

Some reward. Now Aravosis backs a candidate who promoted a gay-bashing entertainer to suck up to a fundamentalist South Carolina electorate.